


Weight

by crusdrabbles



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: M/M, he's not dead so im not tagging death but i mean..... he Gets Close
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 07:17:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20524106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crusdrabbles/pseuds/crusdrabbles
Summary: Only one shooting star hit the water that day, and it was Kairi who clawed her way through the surf to come home alone.So Riku comforted her, settled the crowd - and then left in the dead of night. He came back alone too, but not quite.





	Weight

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be honest. I want to finish this, but it requires an attention span i do not have right now. i think it ends in an acceptable place. i will hopefully update with the aftermath.

Only one shooting star hit the water that day, and it was Kairi who clawed her way through the surf to come home alone.  
  
So Riku comforted her, settled the crowd - and then left in the dead of night. He came back alone too, but not quite.  
  
-  
  
Riku's chest feels heavy; every movement feels faintly like slogging through mud, every breath demands that he breathe just a little bit deeper. He wonders how Sora ever did it, how he carried the burden of so many hearts like it was the easiest thing in the world. He wonders if Sora felt lighter when they left him, or if he had the opportunity to notice at all. Perhaps he had just never known anything different, having been tasked with the safety of someone else from the moment he was born.  
  
Riku's union with Ansem wasn't quite the same; he was more of an insidious leak - drawing light off of him and feeding darkness in. He'd been a ghost taking advantage of Riku’s empty shell - not a heart to heal. His replica wasn’t quite the same either, a mere fragment with no intention of becoming whole again. No, this weight was different.  
  
This weight was Sora.  
  
Riku pauses midway down tower steps to catch his breath yet again, and hopes that the king was right; that this weakness would soon pass. He would do it, he had to, but that fortitude doesn't deny him the right to be scared. To be terrified, really. Terrified of his weakness under the burden of Sora's shattered heart, of his ability to heal and protect it, of whether or not the darkness inside him would forever taint his dearest friend.  
  
Sora hadn't been scared, or if he had been he didn't let Riku see. He had found Sora, weak and dying, on the shores of the Dark Margin. Rousing him from the clutches of slumber and darkness had been difficult, and even once Riku had succeeded Sora was too broken to make it back in one piece.  
  
Sora has a smile he uses when he knows he's about to do something that upsets you. Its grown smaller and more informed with age, but it's still the same one. He'd used it before releasing Kairi's heart, he'd used it before fighting Aqua on Riku's behalf, and before leaving on a suicide mission to save their friend; he'd used it there, in Riku's arms.  
  
He had pulled his heart from his own chest - how, Riku doesn’t know - and his life drained from him before Riku’s very eyes. It was a shadow of what it used to be, dim and cracked where before it must have been bright and strong. Riku had worried, but Sora had smiled; he had caught Riku’s hand as he uselessly tried to push his friend’s heart back inside his body.  
  
“For safekeeping?” He had asked, and if he was sheepish about his request he didn't have the energy to show it. Sora was patient, his fingers trailing the shape of his essence to keep him tethered long enough for an answer. Riku hadn't given him one; he had merely slipped his hand behind Sora's and helped him guide the heart into his own chest.  
  
“I'll be right here.” Sora laugh was airy, and with that the remaining light in his eyes dimmed, his hand limp in Riku’s grasp.  
  
Riku sat still and silent in the sand for a very long time.  
  
When he had returned to Yen Sid’s tower, he reported what transpired and suggested he offload Sora’s heart to Kairi in the same breath. Everyone disagreed with him, including Kairi. It was simply too risky, they had argued. That Sora could accept hearts into his own was a miracle; that Riku’s could accept Sora was an anomaly not to be trifled with. Riku had argued anyway, certain that this circumstance was due only to whatever special properties Sora’s heart held. Anyone could carry him, and Kairi should most of all; someone as bright as Sora could not heal in a heart so comfortable with darkness, it would be more sensible to house him in one of pure light. Riku did not want Sora to emerge from his heart stained by the misery and guilt within it.  
  
Only Yen Sid’s argument could sway him; if he woke Sora’s heart in its current condition, he may never wake again.  
  
The events had led him to now, brooding on the steps outside Yen Sid’s tower while the adults decide what to do next. Riku remains impassive as the door opens and shuts quietly behind him, doesn’t move when a slim figure lowers herself next to him.  
  
“They created a safe room for him.” Kairi tells him, and Riku burrows further into himself. “For his body, anyway. They don’t know how long it will take, so they’re discussing options.” From the corner of his eye Riku can see her lean forward and mimic his posture; hands wrapped around shins, chin tucked between knees. “I went to talk to him, but then I realized he isn’t there.” She trails off with a soft laugh, and finally Riku sighs.  
  
“I used to talk to him a lot, when we were restoring his memories.” He mumbles, and Kairi listens intently. He does not mention that he talks to Sora all the time - that when he lacks Sora’s physical presence he still talks to the sky. “Seeing him helped, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me. But I guess… this is different.” Riku’s eyes burn with unshed tears. Kairi rests a gentle hand on his arm.  
  
Where is Riku supposed to send his words now?  
  
“Sora is where he needs to be.” She says, and Riku scoffs.  
  
“He picked the wrong host. You would make a better one.”  
  
“If he had wanted me to save him, he wouldn’t have sent me back alone.” Her tone is imperceptible to Riku, measured and calm.  
  
“You underestimate his stubborn heroism.” Riku’s voice tries for lighthearted, but it falls flat under the burden of its truth.  
  
“I know it isn’t how you see him, but Sora isn’t all light.” She tells him instead. Riku opens his mouth to argue but Kairi shakes her head. “Think about Ven, what happened to him.”  
  
“That’s different.” Riku says.  
  
“Not really.” Kairi shrugs. “Ven’s heart was broken and unbalanced. I don’t think it was just Sora’s light that healed him; I think it was his darkness too.”  
  
Riku hums discontent in her direction, and Kairi heaves a sigh.  
  
“You know he wasn’t doing well.” Her tone is curt, but sad; as if daring him to deny the tears and desperation they’d both seen from Sora in the moments leading up to… their loss. Daring Riku to pretend he hadn’t been playing back the mental tape to realize just how comfortably Sora had been flirting with his demise. Daring Riku to think a little too closely about how Sora greeted his rescue with resignation.  
  
“I’m just saying,” she continues, gently now, “maybe he needs some time in the dark.”  
  
Riku’s heart aches, and he finds himself bitter when he does not feel a warmth from Sora’s trying to comfort it. But he doesn’t deserve it either, not when he missed all the warning signs. What happens when you cling to life after making a hero’s sacrifice? He asks.  
  
Sora doesn’t reply.  
  
-  
  
There are nights when Riku wakes up sobbing, and he can’t for the life of him remember why. Nights when looking at his own face in the mirror sends him into a dizzying spiral of confusion until it all clicks again.  
  
Riku was never able to get used to waking up as Ansem. Sometimes he would go whole days forgetting what he looked like, only to freeze in shock when he caught his reflection. He couldn’t expect Sora to enjoy the experience simply because it was Riku he saw looking back.  
  
“It’s okay,” he lies to his own stricken face, “I’ve got this. I’ve got you.”  
  
Sora calms and the whimpers tearing from Riku’s throat subside. Riku savors those moments, fraught and painful as they are. Moments when whatever veil that separates them is inadvertently brushed aside; when he can feel that Sora is truly there underneath it all.  
  
“I’ve got you.” Riku repeats, but he can no longer tell if it’s for Sora’s sake or his own. Looking into the reflection of his eyes tells him Sora is already gone.  
  
-  
  
The first time he summons the Kingdom Key, Riku nearly faints.  
  
It was so innocuous a summoning. Perhaps he might have felt differently if it came to him in the heat of battle, or in response to a desperate cry for Sora’s aid. Perhaps it would have heartened his belief in their bond, or spoken to the strength of Sora’s heart even it’s weakened state. But it came to him in a sparring match - against _Roxas_, of all people.  
  
It was a month, maybe two, before Riku managed to rejoin the fray of training - though not for lack of trying on his part. Everyone had been treating him like he was fragile since he returned with Sora’s body in his arms and Sora’s heart in his chest. He bore their delicateness with contempt until he realized it wasn’t for his sake. It made it easier, somehow, to not be the direct target of their overbearing concern.  
  
(Sora could have used that concern when he was present to endure it, Riku thinks but does not say.)  
  
He wishes he had indulged in their kindness. Sora’s blade comes unbidden to his palm in the half second before Oblivion finishes its arc toward his side. He had meant to call back Braveheart, but it still lay on the ground just out of his reach. The clang of the blades seems deafening - reverberating through his heart rather than his ears - and both he and Roxas crumple to the ground in shock.  
  
Riku should feel… anything other than what he feels in that moment. He should feel warm, protected, loved; he should feel honored, he should feel hope. Riku feels wretched instead. He feels a cold sweat crawl up his spine and slick his palms, because the blade in his hand sings like it’s finally come home. He’s held it before, its siren cry of a destiny unfulfilled isn’t new. How can he embrace it, though, when it only ever comes to him in the context of Sora falling apart.  
  
Riku doesn’t quite faint, but he might be hyperventilating - which he only becomes aware of when Roxas (of all people) rests a hesitant hand between his shoulder blades. It feels like Sora’s.  
  
“Come on, being a dual-wielder isn’t that bad.” Roxas says quietly, after several tense moments while Riku tries to collect himself in the grass. Riku finally attends to him, blinking up in stunned silence to an awkward grin. As he watches, the grin settles into something softer, something warm. Something meant to go beyond Riku to his missing half. “I guess he wanted to join in the fun.”  
  
The silences drags on until Riku’s wretchedness dissipates with a weary laugh.  
  
“That’d be just like him, wouldn’t it?” He replies. Roxas laughs too.  
  
“Or, maybe he knows you can’t beat me without help.” He teases the air instead of Riku, as if he’s waiting to feel a snappy defense of his honor in return. As if he’s gotten used to communicating in a way beyond words and consciousness, and still struggles to understand why he isn’t getting anything back.  
  
“Do you miss it? Being with him?” Riku blurts out, suddenly desperate to understand that bond; to understand the source of his fondness. The Roxas he knew prior bore nothing but contempt for his role in Sora’s heart. Whatever he felt that changed his mind, Riku finds himself yearning for it.  
  
“I miss him.” Roxas responds with an edge; the bite of someone quick to dispel any notion he might sacrifice his personhood again. Then, more softly: “I miss his warmth, I miss sharing his laugh… But I wouldn’t go back. If you want to know if he’s content in there, I’m not someone you should ask.”  
  
Riku nods solemnly, feeling rightfully abashed at his intrusion.  
  
“But… I’d say you have a pretty good lead.” Roxas offers generously. He taps the keyblade twice, then unfolds himself from his crouch and leaves Riku to contemplate his inheritance in privacy.  
  
Riku examines the Kingdom Key, still clutched in his white-knuckled fist. It’s Sora’s truly, he realizes - not a copy, not a fake. Riku can run the pad of his thumb across the hilt and feel the smooth wear of Sora’s grip.  
  
“Just having fun, were you?” He asks, and life within the blade almost hums. For the first time in two months Riku feels an easy, unforced smile creep into the corners of his lips. “Fine. But don’t over do it.”  
  
_I’d rather have you than this._  
  
-  
  
No one but Yen Sid truly resides in the tower. It’s lodgings were mostly designed to be temporary - for staying the night or two between a briefing and a mission. No one really… wants to live with Yen Sid, to that point, and Yen Sid never seemed like the type to enjoy constant company. In spite of this, the tower had become a necessary home for Riku under the pretense of Sora needing to stay on site. The room he stays in was starting to become his, and once Kairi joined him, hers began fitting her too. But they were no longer the tower’s only semi-permanent residents, and in the time since Sora was brought back the magic that governed the rules of the building had been slowly making more rooms. Most everyone had visited for at least a night or two; checking in on Riku, or sitting with Sora’s lifeless body - if they could stomach it.  
  
Riku visits his body, finally, after three months. Even knowing that Sora is right there in his chest, it still feels like approaching a coffin. It looks like a coffin, he thinks dryly. The glass capsule and its computer console - its wires and knobs and equipment - are out of place next to star covered curtains and busy brooms. A dusty attic turned safe-room.  
  
It isn’t the same technology that kept him in stasis for a year; Sora’s new condition required more. They had tried and failed to replicate the sleep Ventus had been in; Aqua hadn’t wanted to say to explicitly that what they lacked was faith. It was different to have faith and lose it than to be forged in a time with little to spare. So they made due with science and magic and desperation instead.  
  
Riku doesn’t want to look, but he steels himself with the reminder of why he came; Sora needs to see his own face. Sora hadn’t said so, of course (he can’t say anything), but the strange joy of summoning the Kingdom Key had been accompanied by Riku staring in confusion at his own reflection in the training yard more times than he cared to count. He wonders if Sora ever truly has a grasp of what is going on; if his consciousness sits permanently on the edge of sleep, catching only glimpses of the world through the filter Riku provides.  
  
Riku approaches the not-coffin, and what he sees feels… Surreal. Because Sora isn’t there, but he is - and his chest rises and falls as though he’s just asleep.  
  
“I didn’t think you’d still be breathing.” He mumbles distantly; he’s not sure if the out-of-body experience is his own or not. He places a hand on the glass. Tears threaten the corners of his eyes.  
  
  
“I’ve just been leaving you in this lonely room…”  
  
It’s hard, but it helps. Riku thinks it does, at least. He visits regularly from then on - so Sora won’t forget his own face, and so Riku doesn’t forget the rest of him.  
  
-  
  
Six months in, and Sora does not assert control over Riku the way Roxas and Ventus sometimes did to him. Riku does not find himself saying words that aren’t his own, and even the sobbing spells have mostly passed. He cannot tell if it’s because Sora is not yet strong enough, or if he simply respects Riku’s anxiety about being possessed. But Riku does find himself in strange places at night; most often the bathroom, gazing blindly into a mirror until he comes to. Occasionally he gets as far as the stairwell down the hall before waking up.  
  
“Hello.” Comes a voice, and Riku shakes off the stupor of sleep to see nothing but a tile backsplash in front of him. He frowns. A polite cough redirects his attention to his right, by his elbow.  
  
“Xion?” He asks. She smiles.  
  
“Why are you in… my…” Riku shakes his head again. His moves to run his hands through his hair, but he finds himself holding a wooden spoon and whisk.  
  
Riku blinks and fumbles the attempt to voice his surprise - he opts instead to observe his environment while trying to relearn how to use his mouth. Cool stone floors beneath his bare feet, pots and pans cleaning themselves in the sink, curved stucco walls and gentle fire lighting the room from the hearth. He places the utensils on the stove in front of him.  
  
The kitchen. Sora had gotten as far as the kitchen this time.  
  
Warmth fills his palms, and he looks down to Xion again as she patiently slips a cup of tea into his hands.  
  
“You’ve been sleepwalking.” Xion tells him, a little shy and a little sly. “Although, I wasn’t sure I’d be speaking to you.”  
  
“Sorry to disappoint.” Riku breathes, unsteady and exhilarated all at once. Sora was getting stronger, surely - but Riku never liked being out of control of his own limbs. Xion laughs lightly and guides him by his elbow to the table; Riku accepts the invitation to sit.  
  
“It’s alright.” She replies. Riku watches as the sugar pot dumps three cubes in her tea before marching its way over to him. “He doesn’t seem to realize he’s doing it. I thought he might let go if someone noticed him.”  
  
“How… long has this been happening?” Riku asks, and tries as politely as possible to dissuade the dish from giving him a second sugar. Xion hums and leans into her palm in thought.  
  
“Every few nights for about two weeks, I think. Kairi and I have been taking turns watching.” Riku tries his best not to look incredulous. She laughs at his face anyway.  
  
“No one thought to tell me?”  
  
“It’s a pretty recent development.” Xion explains; she sips her tea… not delicately, not like Kairi might. She slurps a little and holds the cup with both hands. Her mannerisms always seemed more like Sora pretending to be Kairi. “We were avoiding waking you up.”  
  
“Why tonight, then?” Riku asks, and Xion sends him a smirk over the lip of her teacup.  
  
“He was trying to cook. I’ve been told his methods are questionable; I was a little worried for your safety.” She says, and gestures at the utensils he had haphazardly placed on the stove. Riku purses his lips, but she wags a finger at him before he can respond. “Enough questions. Drink your tea.”  
  
Riku furrows his brow and sticks his tongue out at her. His face contorts in affronted confusion the very next second. Xion explodes into a laugh before clapping her hands over her mouth - as if the physical restraint might take the sound back. Her eyes glitter with mirth all the same.  
  
“So he is listening.” She exclaims in a whisper, overcompensating for her outburst.  
  
“Well, yes.” Riku mumbles lamely, his fingers roaming his own jaw like a foreign object. “It would seem so.”  
  
“Is he doing it on purpose, then?” Xion asks him, all too delighted that the interrogation has turned.  
  
“I don’t think so, no.” Riku says, but he’s not sure where the thought comes from. It’s his own, he can tell that much, but it’s informed by ones he doesn’t have access to. Riku sighs and leans heavily into his hands. He watches through his fingers as the sugar pot sneaks another cube into his untouched tea with a quiet plop.“I think… when I’m asleep, he is too.”  
  
Xion hums thoughtfully and slurps her tea, allowing him room to contemplate another piece of the puzzle of Sora’s heart.  
  
“He used to sleepwalk all the time, actually. When we were kids.” He recalls, encouraged by Xion smiling fondly at him. Beyond him, maybe. “This might just be more of the same. How has he not wandered out here before...”

  
"We think," Xion muses, spoon spinning for her in her tea, "he's avoiding doors."  
  
Something bitter sinks in Riku's gut, and he thinks yeah, that sounds about right.  
  
-  
  
He should have never gotten complacent; should have never gotten confident. Should have never gone on a mission to the dark.  
  
Riku scrabbles for purchase in the dirt, lungs aching for the air forced out of them by the blow. He hears someone scream his name and _‘RUN!’_ dully, and in his delirium he finds it odd. Riku has never run, not from a fight; not from Ansem, _not from the darkside_. For better or worse, for _saving an ink-drowned Aqua_ or for seeing his best friend’s body lying on a dirty tile floor. He certainly never ran once he understood there was _something_ \- someone - to protect. He wouldn’t run now, just like he didn’t run from _the tidal wave of darkness ripping him apart_ but wait that one’s not _mine_.  
  
He forgot, at some point, that precious person he’s trying to protect is currently an open target sitting in his chest.  
  
It’s Riku who grunts out _‘Shit!’_ but it’s Sora who gets him on his feet, who propels him forward while he’s still remembering how to breathe. Every muscle in his body protests the strain but Sora doesn’t miss a beat.  
  
“Get to the corridor!” Someone yells and Riku doesn’t check to see - it could have been Axel, maybe. Mickey volleys a fearsome thundaga somewhere behind him as cover, everyone suddenly in unspoken agreement that they need to get Sora out of a mission gone south. Riku was a fool coming here, should have trusted them on their own, should have never brought a light so bright into the dark, should just shut up and RUN.  
  
Riku isn’t fast enough. What were all those races for if he can’t win when it counts? Something grabs him by the ankle and flips the world upside down - slams him against the ground hard enough to bounce. He doesn’t know when one demon tower became two, then six. Around black spots he watches the others get taken out - Axel and Terra hurled beyond Riku’s line of sight while the Mickey lands among the rocks.  
  
Shadows rear up above him, and he might be confused as to why they hesitate if he didn’t already know what they want. He’d stolen Sora from this realm, of course it wanted him back. Riku takes an advantage wherever he can; he can’t quite get his feet under him but at least he can draw his weapon. It’s the Kingdom Key that answers his call - Riku cries out (‘NO!’), and the demon towers surge forward.  
  
He should have never trusted Sora to have an ounce of self-preservation.  
  
Sora’s heart ripping from him hurts in a way Riku didn’t know he could. For a moment he can recognize Sora’s silhouette - crystalline pink and raw with energy, the Kingdom Key a shining beacon held high over his head. His presence sucks the sound out of the air and the breath from Riku’s lungs; the full second of silence that follows is the most deafening sound he’s never heard.  
  
Riku has never seen a bomb go off, but he thinks this is what it must be like.  
  
.  
.  
.  
  
In the week before he regains consciousness, Riku dreams of Donald pulling on his ear.  
  
“Never ever!” Donald yells, and Riku tries his best to bat him away; the book of spells he’d pilfered falls from his lap. “If you EVER try anything in that book -”  
  
“Oh come on.” Riku says, finally managing to escape the duck’s wrath. “Why have you got them if they aren’t usable?”  
  
“They’re VERY dangerous!” Donald steams and Riku smiles despite himself.  
  
“So, only for emergencies.” He goads and Donald bursts into a fit. Riku laughs through the hail of feathery fists.  
  
“Only for never!” Donald howls.  
  
“Okay, okay.” Riku says and stands to avoid further abuse. His gaze catches the mirror across the room on the way up, and he locks eyes with Sora’s reflection smiling back. “I’ll only use it if I need to save the world.”  
  
Riku wakes with a jolt and a strangled approximation of Sora’s name. The hand holding his grips a little tighter, the body it belongs to picks her head up off the bed.  
  
“Sora -” Riku tries again, and Kairi gently shushes him. She hoists herself out of chair to sit next to him on the bed, already busying herself with brushing back his sleep-greased hair. She looks exhausted.  
  
“It’s okay, Riku.” She says, but he doesn’t listen.  
  
“He wasn’t strong enough; what he did -”  
  
“He wasn’t.” Kairi tells him, gentle and calm like the sea. “That’s why he borrowed a bit; from Axel, Terra and the King. Mostly you.” The news sits like a rock in his stomach, his mind desperately trying to fill in the gaps. “But he saved everyone, as always. And this time he’s okay.”  
  
“How do you know?” Riku begs. “I can’t feel him.” He’d never noticed Sora’s warmth filling him up until suddenly it was gone, leaving him cold and hollow and utterly terrified he’d ruined it all.  
  
“Because his body is still breathing.” Kairi says, and she plants a kiss on Riku’s forehead. It speaks leagues of understanding that neither of them would ever have the words to voice. “And there’s no way your light would let his go out.”


End file.
